NYC festival for Belgian beer fans – July 8 & 9

To many beer fans, Belgium is the motherland of brewing. For them, and others interested in the genre, the inaugural Belgian Beer Festival will be a go-to event.

Get Real NY, an event production company, will present the two-day festival on Friday and Saturday, July 8-9, at the historic Altman Building.

It will include all-you-care-to-consume Belgian-style brews and homebrews, live music, interactive tasting panels and Belgian food. It will feature more than 100 brews from domestic and foreign craft breweries at home and abroad — Lambics, Sours, Trappists, Dubbels, Tripels, Quads and Gueuze.

General admission is $85, which includes a souvenir glass, unlimited tasting pours, a fest beer guide, unlimited food sampling, live music and tasting panels. VIP tickets at $115 will include that plus one-hour early access to the festival, admission to a VIP tasting room featuring several rare and hard-to-find beers and access to brewery tasting panels and discussions.

The beer and food lineup will be continually updated on the festival website. The Altman building, located at 135 West 18th Street, is a special events space that long housed the now-defunct B. Altman department store.